The UK Health and Social Care Act (2012) and new public management – more of the wrong medicine?

O'Driscoll, Mike
(2018)
The UK Health and Social Care Act (2012) and new public management – more of the wrong medicine?
In: ATINER: 4th Annual International Conference on Public Health, 24-28 June 2018, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

This paper will examine recent restructuring of the NHS following the Health and Social Care Act (2012) and the apparent short term effects of this restructuring. The focus of the paper will be an examination of the extent to which we can understand the changes in the Health and Social Care act and subsequent related ‘reforms’ in the NHS in terms of the public administration model known as ‘new public management’ or whether other models of public administration management may be more consistent with these changes. There is also a focus on the ‘democratic deficit’ relating to these reforms in terms of the lack of political consent or consultation and how public discourse relating to the NHS has changed since these reforms began.